An Invitation to Poetry: A New Favorite Poem Project Anthology

A multimedia collection of poems introduced by American readers, featuring a DVD including a video introduction by Robert Pinsky.

For a reader unaccustomed to reading poetry, or who has fallen away from the custom, this collection offers an inviting way into the art, or back into it. For readers devoted to poetry, it offers illuminating examples of the infinitely various ways a poem reaches a reader.

In both the book and the videos on the accompanying DVD, poems by Sappho, Shakespeare, Keats, Whitman, and Dickinson as well as contemporary poets are introduced by people from across the United States―a construction worker, a Supreme Court justice, a glassblower, a marine―each of whom speaks about his or her connection to the poem. Their comments are variously poignant, funny, heartening, tart, penetrating, and eccentric, showing some of the ways poetry is alive for American readers. An Invitation to Poetry will inspire a fresh experience of poetry's pleasure and insight.

Maggie Dietz is the Favorite Poem Project's director. She lives in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts.

Robert Pinsky is the award-winning author of over twenty volumes of poetry. He served as United States poet laureate from 1997 to 2000, during which time he founded the Favorite Poem Project. He teaches at Boston University and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.